It's a goal, not a resolution

I'm not really a New Year's Resolution person. I find it too stressful; the formality and ceremony of it causes me to put pressure on myself. Of all my flaws, how do I pick just one to work on for this year? Of all the good habits I want to form, which will be the most beneficial? What if I pick the wrong one? Okay, I don't HAVE to pick just one. But the thought of trying to change too many things at once overwhelms me, so I go back to picking the top goal or two and not being able to decide. Every year I run myself in circles with this logic, like a dog chasing its tail, and the stress and frantic energy builds up until I threaten to self-destruct - so then I stop. And I once again settle on setting no goals.

I find it much easier to wait until some other trigger prompts me to set goals. I never have to wait long, because it happens all the time. I read an article about quinoa, for instance, so I go on a health kick and eat quinoa for breakfast every day for a week. Or I deposit some checks into the bank, and their pamphlet by the door about budgeting makes me think that it's something I should do better - so I go home, create a fancy spreadsheet with pivot tables and coloured headings and say I'm going to enter every receipt and elaborately break down every dollar that we spend (which has never lasted more than 3 months). OR I see a sign in Spanish and decide to recommit myself to learning the language (which happened a couple days ago, by the way - this one I REALLY want to do, partly because Scott speaks it, but this is the seventh try since we got married 4.5 years ago and I can't stick with it! I haven't figured out why yet. Maybe I need more structure than trying to study it on my own???) My personality is such that I jump from obsession to obsession, getting REALLY excited about something and wanting to do nothing else for a couple of weeks until I get tired of it and find something else to occupy my time. I've learned to be careful about not spending lots of money on a new "hobby" until I'm sure that it's going to last (which it never does!). This style isn't necessarily bad; I may not have ever become an expert at anything, but I know a little about A LOT of things. And I suppose that has merits of its own.

I've gotten off track here; the point of this post was to talk about a goal I'm setting now, not as a New Year's Resolution but just a goal. No NYR pressure, so no getting overwhelmed - it just so happens that I'm starting it in January, and it will take until the end of the year! I have a textbook from BYU about the New Testament, called The Life and Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles. For my scripture study this year, I'm going to work my way through the whole book. There are 56 chapters, which equals about a chapter a week. I probably won't post much about it here, unless something really inspires me, but I wanted to put it out there for others to know about so I would feel accountable. Feel free to ask me from time to time how it's going, to keep me on track!

THAT Hymn

Besides the craziness of a new schedule, losing half of my nursery children to Primary, and several people still being on vacation (meaning we're 'short-staffed'), there is another reason I dislike the first Sunday of January.

Hymn #215.

It's called "Ring Out, Wild Bells", and is the go-to New Year's hymn every year. And I hate it. One of the best (and when I say "best" I actually mean "worst") lines is: "The old year is dying, let him die. The old year is dying, let him die." How depressing is that? Although I love singing hymns, there are a few pretty bad songs in the book. But #215 takes the cake as my least favourite. Easy.

At least I won't have to sing it again for 364 days. Not that I'm counting or anything.